Writing about the food, farmers, fishermen, and folk of Long Island's North Fork.

Sports

04/06/2018

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO A day in the sun for fathers and sons, like the Diedrich Family.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on March 29, 2018

When my husband, two adult sons and I travel to Dunedin, Florida, the spring home of the Toronto Blue Jays every March, we come home improved.

We read, we sit around, we drink beer and we watch baseball. It is the spiritual and culinary highlight of the year, a place where our family can experience baseball as a kind of faith and spring training as a pilgrimage.

I start every day with a bowl of Raisin Bran and skim milk in the Holiday Inn breakfast room with the other guests, many from Canada and New York. This year a delightful Toronto-area family of five — parents, two kids and their grandmother — held the room captive. The son was the kind of talkative 10-year old boy who knows a lot of excellent jokes about flatulence. As he encountered the breakfast bar he paused by the tray of condiments to ask his mother, “Did you know that if you put ketchup packets in the freezer they will explode?”

At the table with his parents, and 14-year old sister, he tucked into a pastry completely coated in some kind of thick, white icing. “Cinnamon buns are my favorite unhealthy thing,” he said. “If you were dying, what would your final meal be? My final meal would be a giant hamburger, sausage and bacon.”

His sister took the bait: “Mine would be baby food because that’s what I started with.”

Mom corrected her, “Actually you started with breast milk, so that would have to be your final meal.”

“Gross,” said Dad, changing the subject.

A coach of his son’s team back home, he led a review of the play they witnessed at a Jays game the previous day that began with a base-running error by Dwight Smith and led to two Blue Jays standing on second base, followed by a rundown and a double play that would have been a triple if the Jays hadn’t already had one out, to end the game. Follow?

Never mind. Dad said, “By that point the whole team was laughing.” As were we.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Mother and child in the Florida sunshine on the berm at Phillies Spectrum stadium.

My husband reminded me that Dwight Smith hit a home run off one of our sons at a tournament in Cobb County, Georgia, back in the days when we saw base-running errors and run downs every day in Little League play.

This year, baseball talk in the breakfast room was sometimes derailed by events of the day. In the corner, near the heated box holding the cinnamon buns, three guys in Phillies T-shirts were consulting Google Maps to devise a strategy for driving to Lakeland while avoiding the worst of the spring break and Disney traffic. The guy with the gray goatee asked his Google-Mapping buddy, “What do you think of the Yankee starters?”

Engrossed in his phone, his companion gasped: “Oh my gosh, he just fired Rex Tillerson.”

Our first game was the Yankees away at the Oriole’s Ed Smith Park in Sarasota. We were delighted to see Aaron Judge had also made the trip, something marquee players rarely do in spring training. It’s said that the great Yankee reliever Mariano Rivera never even had a travel jersey for spring games. But there was Judge, a few yards away in right field, making plays and studying the replay on the Jumbotron, looking to get better, as good as he is.

His agility was even more incredible when I took in his kayak-like feet.

On Friday, we traveled along with the Blue Jays a couple of miles to the Phillies Spectrum field. Jays shortstop Gift Ngoepe, was working hard for his spot on the roster. Ngoepe is the first black African player in Major League Baseball.

The Jays recently added poutine, the Canadian comfort food to their stadium menu.

He played a brilliant shortstop, making several dazzling plays. After the game, fans gathered to observe an alligator floating in a fenced-in storm drain outside the stadium on the way to the parking lot.

By Saturday morning, a new front opened in the Holiday Inn breakfast battle of the bulge when the toaster, mounted on a steep angle to make it easier to grasp and remove the bread, began to pop like a fly ball, with toast landing on the floor several feet away.

“Whose toast is that?” said the breakfast room supervisor.

“Why does it jump like that?” asked the gentleman from Quebec.

Dad from Toronto chimed in, “You have to stand by the toaster and catch it, or it just flies right out.”

The matriarch of the family of five from Arkansas suggested, “You should hand out fielder’s gloves so we can get some practice shagging toast.”

Saturday at Auto Exchange Stadium in Dunedin was the Jays annual game with the Canadian National team, a chance for the most promising 16-to-18-year old Canadian players to brush up against the majors. The Jays starter against the junior team was Marcus Stroman, a Long Island native who identifies home as “Medford, LIE exit 65.” The Jays catcher, Russell Martin a former Yankee, came up through the Canadian National team.

The Jays reached into their roster of young legacy talent to make it a day for fathers and sons. Kacy Clemens (son of seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger) started at first, Cavan Biggio (son of Hall of Famer, Craig) at second, Bo Bichette, (son of Dante) at shortstop and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at third.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s father was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in January, a notorious bad-ball hitter who would swing at anything, so when Vladimir Jr. walked his first time up, his patience prompted a fan to remark that he must have gotten his plate discipline from his mother.

Braden Halladay, son of legendary pitcher Roy Halladay, pitched a perfect 8th inning for the Canadian Junior Team. His impossibly long and elegant pitching stance evoked his father’s, who threw the second no hitter in postseason history and died last year in an airplane crash. Halladay’s performance was an emotional link to his family history, as well as baseball history.

02/07/2018

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Animal Control Officer Beau Payne on the hunt recently, getting into position an hour before sundown, a time when deer are most active.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on February 1, 2018

On a frigid afternoon in January, harnessed to a tree stand 14 feet above a thick nest of bittersweet, and well into my second hour of deer-hunting, the parts of me in contact with the steel seat were very cold.

I was armed with nothing more lethal than a camera, but the hunter in the tree stand a few feet away had arrows, and he knew how to use them.

Beau Payne, Shelter Island’s animal control officer, had warned me that hunting with him was likely to be uncomfortable and boring.

“I have no ritual, and I don’t worry about scent,” he said. “I put camo on and get in a tree.”

Although about 200 men and a handful of women hunt on the Island, the responses to a recent town-sponsored survey of residents showed that for many people, deer-hunting is a mystery. Some respondents didn’t seem to be aware that hunting is legal here from October through the end of January.

Since I’m one of the uninitiated, I decided to try and learn what it’s like to hunt deer on the Island.

The first misconception I had to overcome was the idea that it involved a lot of shooting. A hunter can wait silently for hours watching and waiting for a chance to take a shot. It is a winter activity, and snowy conditions are ideal for seeing deer, if not for the comfort of the hunter.

The hunter may sit, lie or climb into a tree erected on the property of a landowner who has given permission, then wait and observe.

It helps not to move too much.

“It’s not particularly exciting,” Mr. Payne said. “The exciting part is seeing game and even possibly harvesting game.”

I’d heard that falling out of a tree stand is a real hazard, so I decided to remove my mittens long enough to make sure I had done a thorough job of closing the carabiner on the safety clip. An hour later, my fingers still aching from exposure to the wind, I understood how a fall could happen.

When the wind shifted the tree against my back, I realized I’d been in that slack-jawed state of consciousness that precedes a nap. If the creaking and shifting of the tree hadn’t jolted me back to awareness, hanging in a harness from the safety strap would have done the trick.

Deer are most active around the first and last lights of day and hunting is permitted from the published sunrise until sunset. Hunters like to be in place well beforehand. That’s why, although we spent the afternoon watching, we didn’t see deer close enough to shoot at until shortly before the time when hunting was prohibited.

With a half hour to go before sundown, four deer appeared, moving in a wide circle around the dense patch of bittersweet in which we watched. They came up around us circling through the brush and appeared suddenly in a grassy clearing directly below us.

The arrow hit the lead doe in the back, and she took off like a rocket.

Mr. Payne was not happy. Later, he said, “It was not a good shot, akin to being shot across the fleshy part of your behind, a very close shave. It might have been more appropriate for me to delay or pass given the turn of events.”

We spent the next hour tracking the doe, starting with a tuft of hair shaved off by the arrow, to the arrow itself, lying near the place where she had bounded into the woods. Mr. Payne was able to judge from the condition of the arrow, her movement as she fled, and the amount of blood, that the wound would not be fatal. But he continued to search.

“I’m probably going to regret doing this,” he said, hunched over, as he entered a briar-ridden thicket of vines so dense it could have been home to a herd.

He extricated himself from the thicket and followed a sign of blood looking like black seeds on the dry leaves — invisible to me — continuing to search until it was too dark to see.

It was a teachable moment on the distinction between hunting deer and culling deer. “If this was culling, the deer would have come to the bait at the exact time and place that I determined, but baiting is not legal for recreational hunting,” he said. “The unpredictability of hunting is what creates the challenge.”

“She was the lead doe in that pack, very intelligent, and this experience will make her extremely intelligent,” he added.

Mr. Payne saw her again a couple of days later, but was not able to take a shot.

The doe was not the only one educated by the events of that day. I saw first-hand the challenges and difficulties of harvesting deer, and the trade-offs between safety and humane treatment of humans and deer on our densely populated Island.

REPORTER FILE PHOTO

A brief history of deer hunting on Shelter IslandIn spite of the local legend that Shelter Island’s deer are descended from a pair brought here in 1892 by Francis Marion Smith, a business magnate, the indigenous whitetailed deer of Eastern Long Island were likely here already, but in much smaller numbers than today’s herd.

Mr. Smith is said to have brought in a non-native species of European red deer or possibly mule deer to stock his deer park, at the site of today’s Deer Park Lane.

Before the turn of the 20th century, Shelter Island wasn’t a good place for deer to thrive because of a limited food supply. But when people began to establish farms and build homes and barns, the deer population exploded as every border between woods and field or house and farm provided perfect places for browsing, which is the term used for herbivores, such as deer, that mainly feed on ground vegetation.

By 1916, the Island’s deer herd was so large and voracious that local farmers called on the state to help eliminate the herd humanely. Over six days in late April 1916, the state answered the call, attempting to relocate all the deer on Shelter Island (estimated at 75 to 200) to Pennsylvania and upstate New York. The project was an abject failure.

After a week of fencing, herding, capturing and shipping, most of the deer were injured, drowned or otherwise killed. About 30 remained at large and only six deer made it out alive and in good enough shape to be transferred to Utica, New York.

Deer in North America had been hunted almost into extinction and public concern led to the formation of a State Conservation Department — the precursor of the Department of Environmental Conservation — established to bring back game species. The conservation efforts worked and by 1969, Suffolk County opened up a limited season to encourage hunting as a way to manage the growing herd.

By the middle of the 20th century it was legal to shoot deer on Shelter Island, but there was not a season. By the 1960s, hunting was such a normal part of Shelter Island life that at least one hunter remembers going for pheasant in the morning before school and then taking his gun to school and leaving it in his locker.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a private hunt club operated on the land that is now the Mashomack Preserve comprising almost a third of the acreage of the Island. Islanders still hunt there as they have for 50 years.

Today, the Shelter Island deer herd is estimated in the thousands, and recreational deer hunting at Mashomack, Sylvester Manor and on a few private properties accounted last year for an annual harvest of about 450 deer.

10/02/2017

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Roger Horowitz at the home on Menantic Creek that has been in his family since the 1960s.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on September 21, 2017

Roger Horowitz grew up on the Upper West Side, went to school in the city and spent every summer of his childhood on Shelter Island, where he learned many important life lessons.

One involved chicken.

Roger’s mother, Louise, used to buy chicken from a kosher butcher in the city, but in the 1960s you couldn’t get kosher meat on Shelter Island. Since the family couldn’t survive the whole summer without chicken, she bought from Bohack, the local supermarket at the time, where she discovered that chicken — and every other kind of meat — was significantly less expensive than the kosher stuff she had been buying all her life.

“There was a whole world out there of meat that was much cheaper,” Roger said. It was a revelation that fueled his interest in the business of American food, and how brands and labels are used by manufacturers to influence consumers.

Roger is now director of the Center for the History of Business, Technology and Society at the Hagley Museum in Delaware. His book, “Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food,” won the National Jewish Book Award for the best book in American Jewish studies in 2016.

Before his parents bought the house on Midway Road that Roger still owns, they rented a cabin in Shorewood, where he remembers being a 4-year old playing in the goldfish pools and formal gardens of the Victorian Manor House. In 1962, a hurricane came through and Roger’s family spent the night in the Manor house to ride out the storm.

When the power went out, they lit candles, and Roger, who must have been a real pest, decided to see what would happen if he put a fork into the flame, and burned his finger.

When the family drove out from the city, they usually encountered horrific traffic, with Roger and his two sisters stuffed into the back seat of a Volvo sedan with shedding cats and no air-conditioning. On every trip, they stopped at the same diner to eat. One time his older sister was sick and threw up at the diner, and in the chaos that ensued his younger sister found a stray cat which she managed to keep by asking their father’s permission while he was distracted.

Edmund turned out to be a great cat.

“The drives were always deeply unpleasant,” said Roger, “which heightened the appreciation for Shelter Island once we got here.”

On day one of each vacation, Roger and his siblings completed a self-imposed checklist of activities — swim in Fresh Pond, take a dip at Wades Beach, ride a bike to Tarkettle Road and back — to mark the commencement of a summer free from supervision. “The mothers would report to all the other mothers where we were,” he said, “but we had freedom.”

A 4 p.m. softball game topped off every afternoon, played in a vacant lot owned by the Ross and Levine families, just up Midway Road from Wades Beach. The pitcher was always an adult, usually Mimi Ross herself. Balls and strikes went uncalled to encourage everyone to swing. Every year a much-anticipated “Daddy’s Game” was held, during which one of the fathers would inevitably pull a hamstring, or trip and fall.

When Roger was about 14, his parents divorced, and their family summers on Shelter Island came to an end. His mother kept the house on Midway Road.

Roger’s mother, Louise, had a Ph.D and taught philosophy at Long Island University, but by 1973, she was out of a job. She entered law school, graduated in 1978, and practiced commercial law for the rest of her life.

“She was ferocious in conversation,” Roger said. “She took no prisoners. Not even her children.”

After the divorce, Louise brought a man named Alton Johnson into their lives. Al was an unlikely companion for a college professor-turned lawyer since he had little formal education and was a veteran of three wars, including Vietnam. He knew plumbing and carpentering, could fix anything, and showed Roger how to work with his hands. Al settled into the house on Midway Road, where he lived for 25 years until his death in 2001.

Meanwhile, Roger graduated from the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, and eventually from the University of Chicago. But first he took some time off to work at a machine shop in Chicago called Chromium Industries, and then as an inspector of tools used in manufacturing televisions.

Roger had grown up in a household where no one worked with their hands. Getting to know Al Johnson, and working in manufacturing gave Roger a set of skills he’d never thought about. “There is a certain feel and sight that comes with using equipment,” he said. “I learned tactile abilities that human beings have but don’t always matter, abilities that, growing up in an intellectual Jewish family, I didn’t develop.”

Roger went on to get a Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin, and joined the faculty of the University of Delaware, where he is now professor of History and Jewish Studies.

The house on Midway Road is still an important part of Roger’s life, even if he now lives far away. Roger and his wife, Jessica Payne, live in southern Pennsylvania, with their children, Lucy, 9, and Breck, 14. The family’s visits to the Island involve a five-hour car trip that takes them perilously close to New York traffic. Roger’s son, Jason, is 25, and often joins them.

Roger’s parents, who had been divorced for 40 years, both died one month apart in December 2010 and January 2011. His father lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico and his mother lived in New York City.

“The timing was very, very tough,” Roger said. “They brought me into this life. It was my responsibility, when they were leaving it, to make it easier for them.”

In keeping with his vocation as a historian of business, Roger said the major change he’s seen on the Island in the 50 years he’s been observing, can be measured in late-model cars. “You used to see Fords and Plymouths and Chevys, and now you see Lexuses, Range Rovers and BMWs.”

He also observed that as middle-class people have been squeezed out, the Island has become much more liberal. “Liberals are more open to government regulation. Out here that means a willingness to regulate short-term rentals, and to preserve public resources. As it’s become more crowded, a realization grows that you need to take care of these resources, rather than assume that nature will take its course.”

Roger measures time like a historian, with a long view of environmental challenges. “I’m very much the result of Shelter Island. I have an appreciation for the natural world and I believe that nature is tough, and resilient,” said Roger. “If you give nature a chance it will recover.”

08/31/2017

COURTESY PHOTO This thresher shark fed a family of three for more than a week, with lots left over.

It took three members of the Mastropietro family 45 minutes to bring in a 177-pound thresher shark 15 miles due south of Montauk, but over a week to fry, roast, grill and give away the hundred-plus pounds of meat.

Fortunately, they have plenty of seafood-loving friends and family on Shelter Island.As sharks go, it wasn’t even that big. This year’s top three winners of the Star Island Yacht Club’s Shark Tournament — the Mastropietro didn’t compete — were 453, 333 and 288 pounds respectively.

The Mastropietros landed their beast on August 8, fishing with Captain Frank Braddick, and first mate Donnie Briand on the Hurry Up. It was their first time fishing for — let alone catching — a shark. Eighteen year old Dino Mastropietro said his father, also named Dino, his Uncle Paolo and he, spelled each other as they fought the fish to the death.

Dino, who is a computer engineering student at the University of Michigan, was awestruck at what they had done. “It was a big, majestic thing,” he said. There was a lot of blood.

The Mastroprietros have rented on Shelter Island every summer for most of Dino’s life and his mother, Karen Pandiani has summered here for 30 years.Dino was determined to make good use of every scrap of thresher, snout to caudal fin. “I thought if we are going to take this thing home, we are going to honor it.”

The first beneficiary of shark largesse was the Pridwin; the Mastropietros brought in about 30 pounds of meat for the chef to cook.

As for the rest, a large extended family, and endless days of fish feasts took care of it.

They grilled shark steaks with the skin on, like swordfish, but started trimming them when the steaks warped and curled as the skin shrank on the grill. As days went by, they made shark tacos, shark po-boy’s, shark fried in olive oil and even shark ceviche.

By August 16 Shark Week at the Mastropietros was over, and all parts of the creature had been honorably dispensed. “That definitely gave me consolation,” Dino said.

06/13/2017

BEVERLEA WALZ PHOTO Returning to action for the Bucks Opening Day June was team mascot Billy Buck with veteran batboy Tate Ford.

Shelter Island Bucks General Manager Frank Emmett and Assistant GM Dave Gurney were in high spirits before the team’s opener at Fiske Field last Friday afternoon even though the day had delivered just enough precipitation to keep the crowds at bay.

But soon the evening turned warm and clear, getting better with every run the Bucks racked up to beat the Sag Harbor Whalers, 12-2.

Father Peter DeSanctis, pastor of Our Lady of the Isle Church, was on hand to throw out the first pitch. Asked if it was over the plate, Father Peter pretended not to have heard the question.

“Definitely over the plate,” fan Rich Surozenski said. “Over the plate on a bounce.”

BEVERLEA WALZ PHOTO Father Peter DeSanctis making the ceremonial first pitch of the season. Fans debated his contention that it was over the plate.

Patrick Clyne, the Bucks starting pitcher, went six innings for the win. Clyne, a Long Island native, attends Long Island University, and is staying at Carol Galligan’s home for the season.

From the top of the lineup in the first inning the Bucks made things happen. Leadoff batter Jacob Stracner singled, as did the next batter Steve Barmakian. Jackson Curb singled, and advanced to second on a wild pitch while Stracner and Barmakian scored.

Bucks Head Coach Matt Wessinger, Assistant Coach Peter Barron, Pitching Coach Tim Nolan and several players are still competing in NCAA games, and won’t get to the Island until they lose in the NCAA tournament. In the meantime, the team is in the capable hands of Interim Pitching Coach Ben Bonaventura and Interim Head Coach Vincent Colasuonno.

Two hours before Friday’s game, Coach Colosuonno accepted a job as National Director of Baseball for Poland. It was exciting news, although it will mean he must give up his position as Director of Baseball for Slovenia.

Most of his 31 years in baseball were spent in the United States, but Colosuonno is bullish on baseball’s global expansion. “It’s become really international,” he said. “A kid born and raised in Lithuania made the big leagues this year. Baseball is the same everywhere, [but] the talent level is a little different.”

Asked if there would be a lineup card posted in the dugout, Coach Colosuonno responded with continental flair, “It is de rigueur to put it up before the game.”

Back for a second year with the Bucks is first baseman Brian Goulard, a junior at Fordham University. Interviewed before the game he worried that “we may be a little sloppy at the beginning. Everyone is trying to find their groove.”

The groove was found; Goulard went two for five in the opener with two RBIs and his defensive game flawless. Goulard’s hosts for the summer are Michael and Liz Galle.

The Bucks batboy, Tate Ford, was back for his sixth tour of duty. Tate, 9, has performed his duties with professionalism for more than two-thirds of his life, and he’s getting even better now that the bats are significantly smaller than he is.

Although this is pitcher Matt Aliki’s first season playing with the Bucks, his brother Anthony was here for two of the Bucks previous seasons. Matt, a sophomore at the University of Bridgeport, said the word on the Bucks is good.

“Ever since the league started up I’ve heard a lot of good reviews about it,” he said “I heard a lot of guys got drafted to MLB [Major League Baseball] from here and that it’s a really good community.”

Matt, staying this summer with Chrissy Gross who also hosted Anthony during his summers on the Island, was happy to report that his brother had a workout for the Yankees last Thursday.

Ms. Gross watched the game on the sideline in the company of a tiny fawn-colored bulldog. She introduced the dog, irresistible to all passersby, who was snorting like a piglet, as the new mascot, “L’il Buck.”

Fiske Field never looked more verdant, and one fan theorized the health of the grass was because the land was once in lima beans.

BEVERLEA WALZ PHOTO Playing the National Anthem, from left, Julia Martin, Olivia Yeaman and Julia Labrozzi.

When outfielder Dave Brehm hit a shot to right field in the second inning, no one was more delighted than Brehm’s grandmother, Marie Buscemi. “He’s just a great guy,” she gushed. “His folks are up in Westchester. He’s living with me while he’s here. He can go in and out as he wants.”

With two more home games to follow — all Buck victories, it turned out — three fans took time during a Sag Harbor pitching change to plan the rest of their baseball weekend. “There’s three in a row, but I can’t come on Saturday or Sunday.”

“What’s your excuse?”

“Marriages.”

“Who gets married on the day of a baseball game?”

“Yeah, marriage can wait. Get married during the football season.”

The game ended with first baseman Brian Goulard’s Gumby-reach-and-grip on the last of the game’s three double-plays to send Sag Harbor back across the water.

Mr. Emmett’s ebullience before the game may cost him his signature ponytail. The Buck’s promising start inspired Mr. Emmet to vow that he would allow Mr. Gurney to chop off the ponytail when the Bucks make the playoffs this year.

Judging from their sensational start winning their first three home games, scissors might be sharpening.

03/25/2017

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO March sunset in Steinbrenner Field in Tampa as the Yankees play the Phillies.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on March 23, 2017

Since the dawn of the 21st Century, my family has traveled to Dunedin, Florida in March.

We’ve checked into a perfectly located Holiday Inn, far from the beach, downwind of a great barbeque joint and a short walk from the Toronto Blue Jays Auto Exchange Stadium. There, we defrost our souls with baseball and pulled pork. This year the baseball was as slow-cooking as the pork shoulder.

On my first morning at the hotel’s complimentary breakfast bar, I stationed myself at a communal table not far from the enormous TV, hoping to capture the zeitgeist of 2017 spring training. There was some talk about the new rule that attempts to speed up the stately pace of baseball by doing away with the intentional walk.

Nevermore will catcher and pitcher have a loopy, four-pitch toss, casual and silly-looking but full of dark meaning, as the dangerous man with the bat is sent to first base where he can’t do too much more damage. Now the guy with the high batting average will just appear on first base as if he stepped into the Transporter in the dugout and said “Beam me up.”

Most people I spoke to think the new rule is a shame, and won’t noticeably shorten the games.

The repeat customers greeted the new breakfast attendant who was two days into his job refilling coffee pots and fixing the occasional blockage in the raisin bran dispenser. The attendant talked shop with the “Four-Guys-Formerly-from-Boston,” old friends who meet at the Holiday Inn for a week of baseball every spring.

The attendant was soon coaxed into sharing one of his own cherished baseball memories: “My daughter was born at 9:16 p.m., right at the first pitch of the third game of the World Series. It was delayed for rain, and just as the players were coming out, she was coming out. Eight years ago — it was a historic day for me.”

Even if he had not mentioned his daughter’s birth, you’d know this guy was the father of a young child by the way he handled the failure of the pancake batter to coalesce into a hotcake as a youngster attempted to use the automatic pancake machine. The result was unsightly, but the child went away satisfied, and the rest of the molten mess was discreetly removed.

What does appear to shorten baseball games is efficient pitching, as demonstrated by the first two games we took in. When the Yankees and Phillies met on March 15, it took the Yankees just 2 hours and 19 minutes to beat the Phillies 3-1.

The next night it took the Orioles three and a half hours to tie the Phillies in nine innings. The start was enlivened by the amazing athleticism of one man with two steel drums playing the National Anthem. Somehow he generated the sound of a full band, accompanied by the sing-along of the Orioles fans on the “O” in “O, say does that star-spangled….”

Most of the game was a plodding no-hitter for the Phillies, with several walks and wild pitches in the first eight innings. It wasn’t until the ninth before the athletic accomplishment of the guy with the drums was surpassed by the players on the field. Finally, an Orioles base hit and home run tied the game 2-2 giving the Birds a shot at a walk-off, and briefly energizing the crowd that had sat so patiently through all those scoreless innings. The Orioles did not walk-off, and the game ended with a whimper.

When the Yankees no-hit Detroit on St. Patrick’s Day at Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland, almost no one noticed, including the Yankees. Coach Joe Girardi reportedly laughed when asked if he had saved the lineup card from the no hitter.

That’s because in the alternate universe of spring training baseball, what matters truly is not if you win or lose, but how you play the game.

“There goes the no-hitter.” The fan who uttered this was seated a few rows in front of us as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays faced the Toronto Blue Jays in Dunedin the following day, but we could hear the irony loud and clear — the Rays batter got the team’s first hit in the second inning, hardly a dramatic moment.

Some fans focused on ice cream, specifically the relative merits of soft-serve vs. dippin’ dots, a deconstructed form of ice cream made by liquid nitrogen-wielding food scientists. “I don’t like dippin’ dots,” said the mother of two teenagers from Toronto to her girls. “It’s just wrong.”

“Do they have those little wooden paddle spoons?” asked one of the daughters. “Ice cream tastes better off a wood spoon.”

The Jays 40-year old pitcher Jason Grilli faced five batters, came out of the game and started off the field mumbling audibly that he had no adrenaline for signing baseballs for the fans, until the veteran was stopped in his tracks by a carrot-top toddler in a tiny Jays jersey.

“I think I need a new hat anyway,” Grilli said, and signed the sweat-soaked brim. He handed it to the boy and continued into the clubhouse.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Valentina Zambri of Toronto endured a 26-hour car ride with her parents and infant sibling to attend a Jays game in Dunedin, and was rewarded with a major-league baseball tossed to her by a Jays player.

09/26/2016

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Julia Weisenberg taking a break in the middle of her workday. She no longer wears business suits or reports to a Manhattan office.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on September 22, 2016

When Julia Weisenberg was an elementary school student on Shelter Island in the mid-1980s, her father, Bill Romanchuk, was an effective voice in the local movement that helped shut down operations at the newly constructed Shoreham nuclear power plant.

LILCO, a precursor of LIPA and PSEG, had built the facility on Long Island Sound near Riverhead. Many feared if it malfunctioned — as other nuclear power plants had — it would be impossible to evacuate the East End. Julia remembers being proud to stand next to her father at a rally.

“I thought, O.K., now my dad is going to give them hell,” she said. “He did not back down. He was a leader.”

Julia’s parents, Bill and Regina Romanchuk are gone now, but Julia said their example guides her every day and was an important factor in her 2015 decision to leave corporate life as an executive with Sorenson Communications and support her young family as a fitness coach, and most importantly, move back to the Island and live in the house where she grew up.

Born in Bellerose, Queens, Julia and her parents moved to Silver Beach when she was an infant. She remembers a rich and adventurous childhood, with daily, year-round visits to the beach near her home, exploring the airfield at Westmoreland Farm, making impressions of animal footprints, dissecting owl pellets and playing house in an area near Klenawicus Field that used to be strewn with discarded dishwashers and kitchen cabinets.

Julia has two sisters from her father’s first marriage; Lynn, who lives in South Carolina and Lori, who lives in Manhattan. Her youngest sister died as an infant of sudden infant death syndrome and her older sister Corinne, who lived on the Island, died at 29. Julia graduated in 1992 from Shelter Island High School.

In elementary school, she had a stutter that made it difficult to use the telephone, order in a restaurant, or participate in classroom discussions. Speech therapy helped her with her disability, but she kept the feeling of being vulnerable. The determination to have alternate ways of communicating motivated her to learn American Sign Language (ASL) in her teens.

At first, she said, she used ASL to communicate with the deaf parents of a high school boyfriend, but eventually her interest led her to become an interpreter, a skill she used to put herself through college.

In 1997, Julia was 24, studying at Stony Brook University and working as an interpreter, when she was called in to help with a special situation. Sixty-two deaf and mute Mexican immigrants had been discovered living in slavery in Queens and investigators needed sign language interpreters who could also understand Spanish to communicate with the victims.

The experiences related by the victims were horrific, and Julia’s work helped get them back to their lives and families.

From 1994 until 2011, she was at Stony Brook, where she finished her B.A., got an M.A. in teaching English as a Second Language, conducted research in sign language and was awarded a Ph.D. in Linguistics. She was then hired as a professor and taught ASL until moving to Manhattan to take a job at Sorenson Communications, a telecommunications company that provides telephone services for the deaf using interpreters. Julia became the manager of the company’s largest call center in Manhattan.

In 2008 she was in Moscow working as an interpreter for a group of deaf visitors, when she met Dmitri Kolmogorov, the liaison for the Russian side who was also deaf. Julia remembered it was raining. “He put up the umbrella and gave me his arm. I thought this is the kind of thing my father would do, this old world gentlemanliness,” she said. “I thought ‘I’m going to marry this man.’”

During their courtship, she flew to Russia and Dmitri flew to see her in the U.S. until they decided they were a couple and he moved to New York. Today he works as a life coach for deaf clients, helping them get interviews and practice job skills. Julia’s oldest daughter Anne, 14, by a previous marriage, goes to school on Long Island, and her daughters, Daria, 12 and Regina, 5 attend the Shelter Island School.

When Hurricane Sandy flooded lower Manhattan in 2012, the offices of Sorenson Communications at 99 Wall Street were destroyed. With call volume spiking, and the equipment destroyed, Julia had to send local employees — some of whom had lost their homes in the storm — to other Sorenson call centers across the country. Meanwhile, she had evacuated her ailing mother from Shelter Island to her New York apartment to ride out the storm in safety, and her kids were out of school.

“I had to remain calm,” she said. It took eight months to find a new office and reestablish the call center in Manhattan. In the interim, Julia had to run the center from her laptop with interpreters at remote locations.

She now teaches “PiYo,” a kind of high-intensity, low-impact workout. She runs virtual groups and provides support to individual clients using Facetime, Zoom and a PiYo app. She also teaches group PiYo classes in person on Shelter Island, in Greenport and to local private clients. She welcomes deaf students in her live and virtual classes. She said. “I tend to have clients who are parents and work full time, and I have to be available to them all the time.”

Julia’s local PiYo classes are partially funded by the town and offered twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday from 6 to 7 p.m. throughout the winter for $5 per person, per class.

Like most Islanders, Julia has noticed the increase in summertime tourism here over the years. “I know sometimes people say tourists don’t care for it the way we do,” she said. “But the people I meet seem grateful to visit here. If my father had not felt comfortable when he came here on vacation, he might not have bought the property.”

Julia’s closet is a reminder of the change she made in her life a couple of years back, with neatly hanging business suits now unused taking up half the space, and the other half stuffed with workout clothes.

“My childhood was so wonderful, that I felt it calling me back here. I step out in my back lawn on Silver Beach and I feel so peaceful,” she said. “I can feel my parents everywhere. They instilled in me good values and I’m trying to grow those bigger and better.”

09/21/2016

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTOStan Church at his Ram Island home overlooking the spot where he first dropped anchor in 1979.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on September 15, 2016.

When Stan Church was in his early 30s, he was already the founder and owner of one of the top marketing agencies in New York. But when he wasn’t pitching clients or coming up with innovative ways to reinvigorate a brand like the Pillsbury doughboy, he was sailing.

Stan decided to see if he could get a captain’s license. He took the exams and qualified for a 50-ton license, and five years later, when he renewed it, he said they gave him a 100-ton license — sufficient to run a North Ferry boat — because of the time he had spent crewing for a very large yacht.

For 20 years, Stan’s father was mayor of New Rochelle, the place where Stan was born in 1941 and grew up with sisters Jacqueline and Rochelle. His parents divorced, there was a custody battle, and Stan stayed with his father.

“We had lots of privileges — housekeeper, nanny, a driver to take me to school,” he said.

When Stan was old enough to insist, he moved to St. James with his mother, where the lifestyle wasn’t as fancy. “I worked every afternoon, made $60 a week and gave my Mom $30,” he said. “I went down to Stony Brook Harbor and went clamming, and was just a kid again.”

His father wanted him to attend West Point, but Stan already knew he wanted to work in a creative field and rejected the idea.

Instead, he went to the Parson’s School of Design and took a job in 1963 with the venerable advertising agency BBDO, helping to pitch accounts, and rising quickly to the position of art director.

“I am competitive and ambitious and I worked weekends and nights,” Stan said.

He left BBDO in 1966 to start his own agency, and when he merged with a more established firm in 1975, the new company became Wallace Church. Three years later, he began teaching part-time at Parsons, which he did for many years, becoming a mentor to students who went on to work at his and other creative agencies.

Today he is the sole owner of Wallace Church & Co., where over the years he’s worked with iconic brands such as Heinz, Ciao Bella, Pillsbury, Revlon and Nestlé. He’s the recipient of many design awards and was named an American Institute of Graphic Arts Fellow in January 2010.

The 2008 recession was a challenge to Stan’s business. Longtime clients held back on work and the business had to “re-scale.”

He was able to accomplish this reduction, he said, through attrition as other companies came after his employees.

“A lot of the talent in my office went elsewhere in the industry,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me because I helped them get there.”Stan’s first job after graduation from Parsons was as a cook on a large yacht, visiting harbors up and down the East Coast. “I had seen a lot, but in 1979 when I pulled into Coecles Harbor, I thought it was the best place I’d ever seen,” he said. “And it was driving distance from the city.”

Stan’s first home on Shelter Island was a boat. As soon as he arrived in Coecles Harbor, he got a bite to eat at the Ram’s Head, and went directly to arrange a mooring.

Later he purchased a 41-foot sailboat to keep at the mooring, and lived in it for several years before buying a cottage in Westmoreland in 1983. A decade later, Stan designed and built his current home on Big Ram Island, looking out at the same part of the Island he fell for in 1979.

Stan has been married to his wife Kristin for 15 years; his two previous marriages ended in divorce. Kristin is director of marketing for Mandarin Oriental Hotels and the mother of the youngest of Stan’s four children, Madison. An accomplished equestrienne at 14, Madison rides at Hampshire Farms and has won two ribbons at the Hampton Classic, including the top prize in 2015.

Nothing says more about what is important in Stan’s life than the prominent role his children play in it, his company, and his plans for the future, he said. His oldest child, Wendy, has worked with him at Wallace Church & Co. for many years, and will soon become a partner in the company.

His daughter Robin is in her 40s. An interior designer, she lives in Tampa. His 30-year-old son, Justin, lives in Portland, Oregon. Stan, Robin and Justin are contemplating a venture together to design and build homes on Shelter Island.

“Shelter Island is a fairy tale and it’s nice to be in that story,” Stan said. They would design homes “with a European flavor; quality homes, something precious.”

Stan does not think Shelter Island is overrun with development. “Sunset [Beach] is a novelty because it is a crazy place and the beach is like the Riviera,” he said. “People here are not so into themselves. It’s more comfortable here.”

In 2012 Stan and Justin rode out Superstorm Sandy in their Ram Island house, a memorable experience for both men. Looking out into the storm to where his dock should have been, Stan said all he could see was whitecaps. During the storm, he and Justin heard banging and saw that a large propane tank had floated up to a neighbor’s house and was battering the kitchen door, propelled by waves of water.

“We got a line on it and dragged it into the woods,” Stan said. With a gas stove and a source of water, he didn’t consider evacuating the home he loves. “I knew I had whatever I needed,” he said.

Stan Church,Lightning round

What do you always have with you?

A pocket full of pennies. I used to think if you found a penny heads-up it was good luck. Things were going so well I didn’t want to give any of them up.

Favorite place on Shelter Island?

My home. I look up in the sky and thank God to be so lucky.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island?

The British Virgin Islands, Jost Van Dyke.

Last time you were elated?

When Justin was born.

What exasperates you?

When I know for sure something is right and my clients just don’t want to go that way.

Last time you were afraid?

I was in a 40-foot boat in 30-foot waves, dark of night, and although there were seven aboard, only two of us could sail the boat.

Best day of the year on Shelter Island?

Christmas morning. Everyone is sharing and giving and happy and the kids are there.

Favorite book?

When I was a kid I was fascinated with the Sears Roebuck catalog; farmers equipment, clothes for foul weather, hammocks of all kinds, tools.

Favorite food?

Gelato

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family?

Milton Glaser, the graphic artist. He’s the most gifted person I know.

09/19/2016

It was a sunny Friday afternoon in August, and although Dr. Nathanael Desire’s office hours at the Shelter Island Medical Center were over, he was still there.

Seated in the waiting room, Dr. Desire was telling me about his life, his work, and how the past three years as one of Shelter Island’s family doctors have strengthened his ties to the community. Suddenly, a very small member of that community appeared at the office door in his mother’s arms. He was having difficulty breathing.

Dr. Desire stopped talking in mid-sentence — my question was “How do you handle a crisis?” — listened carefully as the mother of the coughing child explained the situation, and guided them both to an examining room, saying, “Hey, big fellow. I’m Dr. Desire. How you doing?”

The doctor was in.

Dr. Desire was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he grew up speaking mostly Creole at home, and reading French at school. He was almost 10 years old when his family moved to Brooklyn, where he went to the elementary school around the corner and ran home to watch Spiderman on TV. Today his English is a perfect testament to his ear for language, and the educational value of Spiderman.

His was a large family with two brothers, and four sisters. He attended John Dewey High School, went on to major in finance and investment at Baruch College, and went to work as a banker. But his real love was science, not business and he longed for a more caring profession. He left his job in banking and three weeks later was studying gross anatomy in medical school.

Dr. Desire met his future wife, Anthonette Banks, through his sisters. They were all friends, and the families also knew each other through the Seventh-day Adventist Church, an important institution in their lives.

The couple started dating when Anthonette decided to go to college in Massachusetts at Mount Holyoke. Nathanael was living at home, working at the bank, and began driving to Massachusetts on weekends to see her.

They married in 1996 in a three-week gap between the second and third year of medical school, “a little secret within the medical profession,” Dr. Desire said. “Around the break a lot of us got married.”

In 1998, he received his degree from the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine, Old Westbury, and did his internship in internal medicine and pediatrics at Stony Brook, qualifying him to take patients of any age. He established a private practice in Bellport, and the Desire family still lives in Coram.

In addition to his extensive training in medical school, Dr. Desire has additional training in conducting the specialized immigration physicals required of people applying for a green card. He also does physicals for special commercial licenses, such as truck drivers, firefighters and other physicals with unique requirements.

“Not every physician does it,” he said. “People come to me from around the East End for these physicals.”

When Dr. Desire first came to Shelter Island, he was on his way from his Bellport practice to the San Simeon nursing home in Greenport. “It was winter, and I liked that I could drive from one end to the other and not much was happening,” he said. “So when I saw there was an Island Medical Center, I stopped in and introduced myself to Dr. Kelt.”

Dr. Desire and Dr. Ann (as she prefers to be called) have two children, 8-year-old Natalie, and 4-year-old Nolan. “A delight,” he said. “They are keeping us young.”

Nolan is left-handed in a family of righties, and Dr. Desire admitted that he bought a See-n-Say-style toy for his little southpaw — not realizing that playing with it would require Nolan to execute a move like a cowboy roping a calf to pull a string on the right and make the toy moo like a cow.

Nolan was diagnosed on the autism spectrum. Dr. Desire worries when he thinks of what it might mean for his son. “I’m level-headed, and see that he’s making progress, but as a parent it’s never fast enough.

There is tremendous hope, but there is also fear for the future.”

Dr. Desire said he leans heavily on God and prayer in his life. “If I am faced with a crisis, I pray about it, because God is the one who guides me,” he said. “The steadiness helps me a lot.”

Dr. Desire and Dr. Ann have built their practice around the idea that taking the time to talk with patients is good medicine. “Most of our patients appreciate the time we spend with them,” he said. “The insurance company does not value it, but we do.”

Having a conversation with a patient, he said, is the best way to get to know the whole person, and get a sense of who they are and where they are going. “I’ve learned that many of my patients first came to the Island with their parents or their grandparents,” he said. “Now that they are older, they’ve inherited this place.”

Sometimes these conversations take an unexpected turn. Recently, a patient mentioned that his father had worked in banking at Manufacturer’s Hanover, a large company that was taken over by Chase years ago. As they talked, Dr. Desire realized he knew the young man’s father from his banking days, a friend he hadn’t seen in 20 years.

“My dad’s in the waiting room now,” the patient said, and an impromptu reunion ensued.

In contrast to his practice in Bellport, where Dr. Desire saw a fair number of tick bites, but only rarely with Lyme disease, on the Island many more of those with tick bites develop Lyme. Aside from the frequency of tick-born disease, Dr. Desire said the health issues he sees on the Island are similar to what he’s seen throughout his years of practice; lifestyle-related illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.

“The goal is to use as little medicine as possible to get the effect you need,” he said.

Now in their third summer providing medical care on the Island, Dr. Desire said he and his wife are starting to get a feel for the rhythm of the place. This year, they closed their Bellport office, committing themselves to their practice here. Their Island office is open three days a week in the winter and five days a week in the summer.

08/22/2016

REPORTER FILE PHOTO Shelter Islander Amanda Clark, left and Sarah Lihan during a training session ahead of the London 2012 Summer Olympics.

Every four years the Summer Olympics gives me license to dream.

As I watch swimmer Michael Phelps, shaped like a garden trowel with flippers for feet, win another gold medal in the 200-meter butterfly, I imagine myself slicing through the water like an eel. And when the bouncy, sparkly nymph Simone Biles flies through her floor exercise like Tinkerbell, I think back to my high school gymnastics class, in which I once executed a forward roll on the balance beam flanked by my classmates who pushed me back onto the beam as I rolled heavily off.

Later I made a misstep while attempting a vault, and broke my little toe, effectively ending my gymnastics career but never my daydreams of Olympic glory.

Not even a cloud of Zika-carrying mosquitoes, polluted water and a disgraced Russian track team could stop Rio de Janeiro from throwing a great 2016 Olympics.

On Sunday the party ended and the torch was passed to Tokyo for 2020. The process of choosing the host city for the 2024 Olympics will be decided next year by a vote of the 100 International Olympic Committee members from among the five cities still left in the running; Los Angeles, Rome, Paris, Budapest and Hamburg. Here’s Life on the Half Shell’s official bid for Shelter Island to host summer games of 2024.

Until July of 2015, Boston was on the shortlist of five cities vying for 2024 summer games. But when Bostonians failed to summon enthusiasm for the expense of hosting the Olympics, they were dropped from consideration, replaced by Los Angeles.

Los Angeles’ bid for the Olympics immediately found favor with the I.O.C. since their pitch emphasizes the sustainability of their plan, which would require the construction of only one new building since they already have a “pre-enjoyed” Olympic stadium; the one they built when they hosted in 1984.

If hosting the Olympics without constructing new buildings is the measure of sustainability, what place could out-sustain Shelter Island? We manage to host 10,000 visitors every summer and we don’t even have public bathrooms.

Cities that bid for the Olympics submit a transportation plan, and Shelter Island’s would establish East and West ferries to complement the current North and South, along with an “All Hands on Deck” system; a fleet of private boats from paddleboards, to kayaks, to yachts prowling local waters and dispatched with an Uber-like app.

The Shelter Island bid would include a generous supply of athlete housing, due in large part to the complete absence of local regulations controlling short-term rentals. An Airbnb/VRBO/Town of Shelter Island marketplace would procure agreements from an estimated 95 percent of local homeowners to vacate their homes for the duration of the games, allowing the athletes to stay unsupervised and unimpeded.

Since this is pretty much what happens during a normal summer, there would be plenty of housing.Olympic hosts are expected to outline a security plan to keep the athletes and spectators safe during the Games. Our defensive fauna would be a key part of our security plan. Operation Deerhawk would employ osprey on patrol in the skies, communicating with teams of browsing deer, to identify and repel intruders.

Any evildoer who has seen what an osprey can do to a bunker fish will know they are no match for a raptor with a six-foot wingspan and talons, especially when they have a bulls-eye rash on their back from an encounter with deer ticks.

Construction of stadiums and venues are usually part of a host-city’s Olympic bid, but would we really need them? Shelter Island events are traditionally pop-up affairs: Shakespeare performed on the lawn at Sylvester Manor without the cost and fuss of building a theater; Sunset Beach volleyball played in front of an admiring crowd seated at the café across the street.

Every Bucks fan knows when you attend a sporting event on the Island, you bring your own chair.

Like all Olympic hosts, Shelter Island would face challenges. 2016 Olympic rower Megan Kalmoe claimed that she wasn’t worried about polluted water in Rio, writing in her blog that she’d row through anything to represent America.

Her resolve to soldier on in spite of disgusting water could be the sort of support needed for a Shelter Island Olympic bid to prosper, since after last Wednesday’s heavy rain, the waters around Shelter Island were closed for shell fishing, the summer algae blooms resulting from nitrate runoff were turning local bays the color of beet juice, and Fresh Pond was taking on the same shade of green seen in Rio’s Olympic diving pool.

Organizers of the summer games are said to be considering eight new Olympic sports, including bowling. Of course the 2024 games in Shelter Island would be the ideal place to introduce the world to Olympic bowling. Kevin Lechmanski who bowled a perfect 300 game during the Shelter Island Men’s Championship Tournament on April 1 could be Shelter Island’s next Olympian.